Soul That Asked Its Shelter
by varietyofwords
Summary: Alex and Jo. Oneshot. Future fic. "And I don't have a mom who can tell me if I really need a bassinette and a crib or stay with me when your paternity leave ends or reassure me that I'm going to be a good mom. I have you, Alex. That's it."


She shifts on the stool straightening her back and pressing down her shoulders as her left hand moves from the counter to the small of her back. Kneading her fingers into her skin through the fabric of her black t-shirt, she tries to alleviate the knots of tension and stress like a baker smoothing out lumps in dough. And she tries to tell herself to relax as tears well up in her eyes, as the numbers before her blur and refuse to add up into a final figure that makes sense.

The electricity bill, the phone bill, the mortgage, Alex's student loans, and two credit card statements are spread out across the kitchen counter in front of her. Their numbers have been painstakingly copied into the checkbook for their joint banking account and then recopied again into the paper ledger she keeps. Each line is assigned a category – utilities, food, housing, income – just as Ms. Schmidt taught her over a decade ago, but her handwriting has started to loop and twist into an unrecognizable mess.

Dropping the black pen into the crease of the checkbook, Jo raises her right hand to wipe away a falling tear while her left hand continues to knead the latissimus dorsi, oblique abdominal, and lumbar triangle muscles. The names spring to mind – residuals from years spent studying biology at Princeton, medicine at Harvard, and then bounding from one surgical service to the next at Grey Sloan – as her fingers move across her back and then evaporate when she hears the glass pane of the front door rattle as the door is opened and then slammed shut.

Jo frantically wipes away her tears reaching for the pen and arching her back as she leans over the stack of bills. She tries to appear nonchalant, although her posture makes her look freakishly protective of her role as their accountant, and she merely shrugs her shoulders at the mumbled greeting he offers her on his way to the fridge. Her head remains dipped in concentration, but her eyes bright with tears lift to watch him root around the fridge for something to eat or drink.

The telltale whoosh of a beer being cracked open causes her eyes to narrow, and her jaw clinches when he turns to face her with a piece of cold, leftover pizza dangling from his mouth. His blasé attitude runs right up against her testy one as he takes a bite of the pizza and drops the rest of the slice onto the counter next to the stack of unopened bills she has yet to catalog and pay off.

"What?"

His question is interrupted by a repressed belch and punctuated by a swig of the beer in his right hand, and he seems slightly taken aback by her enmity as he moves the beer bottle from his lips mid-drink.

"Were you planning to eat that or somethin'?"

"You're a douche," she announces in a matter of fact tone as she drops the pen again and crosses her arms across her chest. He sort of shrugs her pronouncement off because he's heard this one before – many times, in fact – but her evident hostility leaves him a bit agape, a bit unsure as he rounds the counter towards her.

"Did I do something wrong?" Alex questions cautiously glancing from her face to the half-eaten pizza to the bills and back again. He's up to date on his loans and stopped throwing those letters away years ago. The check he sent Amber last month was a bit bigger than previous ones, but Jo had been the one to lobby for the increase. Assuming this has to be about the pizza, he switches the beer bottle from his right to his left hand and cautiously reaches out towards her. "If the baby wants pizza, I can order—"

The resounding smack against his hand causes him to recoil, to pull away from her with a look of utter bewilderment. He's heard her threaten to beat up the old ladies in the supermarket or the patients in the elevator who get too handsy with her belly, but she's never smacked his hand away before. She's never smacked him. Period.

And he's still steaming over that fact – his reddened hand pressing against the cool glass of the beer bottle in search of relief – as she kicks the stool she's been sitting on aside and moves to retreat from the situation. He has no plans to engage with her because he knows Jo and he knows anger, but his eyes lift from his hand to her retreating backside just as her bare feet tangle around the black strap of the gym bag he carelessly left in the middle of the walkway.

Feeling as though he's stuck moving in slow motion, he lunges away from the counter towards her and curls his stinging right hand around the bare skin of her upper, left arm. He jerks her upright as a gasp of fear falls from her lips and an explicative falls from his, and the beer bottle still clutched in his left hand sloshes and splashes all over her t-shirt and his arm as he tries to steady her.

There's a moment of painstaking silence as he holds her upright and her hands move to protectively cradle her swollen belly. A moment where he wants to yell at her for not being more careful, kiss her because she's okay, and wring his own neck because how could he be so stupid. A moment where she doesn't smack his hand away or tell him to back off when he reaches out to ghost his left fingers against her stomach through the damp fabric of her t-shirt.

But that moment ends with her open palms pressing against his chest and forcefully pushing him away. Jo's defiant, bright eyes dare him to try and touch her again, and Alex's eyes narrow as he stumbles backwards in response. He kicks the gym bag aside, and it skitters across the floor before coming to stop under the kitchen table as he drops the beer bottle onto the counter with a resounding thud.

"What the hell, Jo?" Alex snaps as he turns back around to face her. He curls his hands around his hips in an attempt to keep the anger coursing through him at bay, but his posture relaxes slightly as his brain registers her still shaky posture and the tears gathering in the corners of her eyes.

"Are you in this?" Her voice sounds less aggressive, less confrontational than she means it to, and the lingering thought he had that her tears might be fake starts to dissipate.

"What?" Alex questions in a voice laced with confusion because he, honestly, has no idea what 'this' refers to. And instead of immediately answering, Jo's right hand brushes aside her hair tucking the strands that had fallen loose from her ponytail behind her ear. Her left hand cups her belly; the diamond ring disappearing under the swell.

"If you're not going to show up, then I just need to know so I can start making plans about how I'm going to do this alone—"

"Shut up," he snarls. The words snap her eyes upward to meet his, and she shift uncomfortably under the heat of his gaze. Jo has never seen him this angry; not even after she reported him to Robbins or pushed him to talk to his dad. "Don't even go there. I'm not walking out on you, and I'm sure as hell not walking out on our kid."

"Then where were you? You didn't text or call. You don't apologize. I sat in that room by myself waiting for you to show up. Do you know many pitying looks from strangers I got because my husband couldn't be bothered to come?"

"Oh, crap," Alex breathes out slowly and slightly under his breath. But Jo catches the words shaking her head in disbelief as she turns away and heads towards the living room.

They had both worked nights three weeks ago – her last night shift until after her maternity leave ended – and, therefore, been forced to reschedule Lamaze class for tonight. A fact he completely forgotten when a trauma involving a tractor-trailer and a school bus rolled in at three o'clock in the afternoon. A fact she tried to remind him of with a voicemail, two unanswered texts, and a page.

He follows her into the living room wiping the beer from his arm onto his shirt and reminding her that she's a surgeon, too. That she should know what to expect from childbirth. That she should understand how he could get tied up and forget. And her jaw tightens with every word, with every step towards the staircase until she stops next to the couch, whirls around, and implodes.

"I need these classes, Alex. I don't have friends who are moms that I can get advice from," Jo reminds him as she folds her arms across her chest once more. He opens his mouth to rebut her statement with a list of names starting with Torres and Mer, but swallows the names with a bob of his Adam's apple as she cocks her hip to the side daring him to challenge her statement.

They've had this argument before, and he can hear her proclamation that those are his friends and her bosses echoing in his mind as her shiny eyes meet his. And he watches with his mouth agape and his features twisted by confusion as her cocky and confident stance begins to crumple, as a fresh round of tears begin clustering in the corner of her eyes.

"And I don't have a mom who can tell me if I really need a bassinet and a crib or stay with me when your paternity leave ends or reassure me that I'm going to be a good mom. I have you, Alex. That's it."

Jo's voice cracks at the finality of her statement, and she looks up at the ceiling in a desperate attempt to stop herself from crying. It is one thing to use tears as a tactic of manipulate and something entirely different to let the man she loves see her vulnerabilities.

Her efforts fail when she feels soft, gentle, and cautious touches against her arms follow by her midsection and, finally, her back as Alex pulls her in for a hug. She doesn't fight him off or push him away this time, and she can feel him relax slightly as he wraps his arms around her and presses his forehead against her temple.

"I really need you to show up," she confesses softly, and only when she feels him nod against her temple and hears his words of apology ghost across her ear does she allow her arms to wrap around him. And despite her best efforts not to, she clings to him digging her fingers into the fabric of his green coat and forcing him to curl his spine around hers.

The opening of the front door causes them both to turn away from one another, and Jo slips through his fingers with a muttered "great" when the identity of the intruder registers. Alex tries to make her stay, but he doesn't dare grab her least she smack away his hand or loses her balance as she trudges up the stairs towards their bedroom.

"What's wrong with her?" Meredith hisses with a disparaging glance at Jo's retreating backside. Jaw locked and clearly exasperated, Alex stalks towards the now closed front door and wrenches it open.

"But—" Meredith retorts insisting for the umpteenth time that he's her person and she needs to talk about Derek and her kids and her surgeries. And Alex holds the door open as he asks if Derek has left her – no, Meredith quickly snaps – or if Bailey and Zola are sick and need a pediatric surgeon – no, Meredith says in a horrified tone – before gesturing for her to head right back from where she came with a nod of his head towards the porch and the driveway where she parked her car. "Alex, I really need—"

"A place to stay? Fine, couch is over there," Alex retorts gesturing towards the gray couch in the living room because his and Jo's house is always open to people who need a place to stay while they sort out their crap. "But I'm calling pause or whatever tonight."

"You can't call pause," Meredith informs him knowingly because she and Cristina made the rules governing personhood as she swings the bag clutched in her right hand onto her shoulder. Yet Alex won't budge from his either-or offer, and she slinks towards the open front door with a disgruntled look. "Fine. I'll go talk to Callie or Maggie, instead."

"Great," Alex calls after her glad that Torres can be the one to chant about being on 'Team MerDer' and Pierce can chastise someone else to read the room as he swinging the door shut behind her. He flexes the fingers of his right hand glancing down to see that the red coloring has disappeared even if the pain hasn't entirely before reaching into the pocket of his coat to pull out his cell phone.

The list of missed calls and texts causes his stomach to drop because he didn't even bother to check his phone when he switched it from his lab coat to his jacket at the end of his shift. He had been far too focused on getting out of that hospital where kids without parents and kids with shitty parents cycle in and out of the building and getting home to her.

Sliding the screen to unlock his phone and dismiss the missed notifications, he taps in his password and then taps on the phone app. The selected number rings in his ear as he walks down the hallway towards the kitchen, as he drops the half-eaten slice of pizza into the trash.

"Karev, you better not be calling me to—"

"Arizona," he dutifully and monotonously says interrupting the giggly woman on the other end of the line, "I am in trouble and I need help. With Jo."

"Oh, god, what did you do?" Arizona asks in an exasperated tone as he gathers up his abandoned beer bottle and dumps its content down the sink. The blonde murmurs along to his explanation interjecting follow up questions when necessary and chastisements when not before agreeing to put something together. And Alex clicks off the phone with muttered thanks as he lumbers up the stairs towards the closed door of his and Jo's bedroom.

He slowly opens the door and then throws it open with a resounding thud against the wall when he doesn't see her curled up in their bed. The closet door is wide open and the bathroom door stands ajar, but the lights in both places are turned off and he stands silently in the door frame as he tries to think where she might be.

A startled rush of air joins a sigh of relief when she unexpectedly steps out of the adjoining bathroom. Her damp, sticky shirt has been removed so she moves into their bedroom clad in only a bra and a pair of stretchy, maternity jeans. The big, blue band of the jeans is stretched across her stomach – her belly button peeking out from above the seam – but Jo moves with the ease of someone entirely comfortable with their body no matter what form it takes.

"Hey," he says softly startling her slightly so she pauses about a foot from their bed and looks up at him with a look of surprise on her face. "I sent Meredith home."

She doesn't comment on his announcement and, instead, concentrates on snapping the instant cold pack in her hand that she fished out from under the sink of their bathroom. She tosses it to him wincing slightly at the sight of his right hand as he reaches out to catch the ice pack before taking a seat on the edge of the bed and offering him a view of her body in side profile.

Her back is so ramrod straight and her belly so round that she resembles a lowercase 'd'; a stupid observation he makes as he takes a seat on the bed beside him. His hand doesn't hurt that much and Alex doubts it will leave a bruise, but he can tell by the way Jo's fingers lightly ghost over the red skin and her elbow nudges for him to use the ice pack that it bothers her.

"I'm sorry," Jo replies softly. "I didn't mean—"

"Don't worry about it," he says shrugging his shoulders. "It was a onetime thing, and I know better than to touch you while we're fighting."

Although she still refuses to meet his gaze, she flinches slightly at his words because they both know this is, in fact, a big deal. And she repeats her apology once more – whether to assuage her guilt or his, Alex cannot say – as he offers his own for missing the class.

"I called Robbins," Alex informs her after a long, pregnant pause. The announcement, obviously, surprises her because she glances away from the hand hidden behind an ice pack to meet his gaze. "I know she and Bailey are your bosses and not your friends, but Robbins used to be my boss and still kind of is and Bailey is no one's friend so I thought – they're both moms. They can probably answer your questions about the bassinette and the crib or other stuff."

"Alex—" Jo softly begins in a voice that cracks with each syllable, but he focuses on pressing the ice pack against his skin and continues to ramble on.

"You're probably gonna want to talk to them before Kepner throws your shower in case she's told people to buy the baby things it isn't gonna need."

"Kepner?" Jo echoes in a questioning tone as her body droops out of its rigid posture. "April Kepner is throwing me a baby shower?"

"It's a joint thing between her and Edwards, and you didn't hear about it from me," he informs her with a pointed look. He hadn't planned on attending the chick fest but, after tonight, he'll go and eat some cake and does not want to spend those three hours getting dagger eyes from Kepner and Stephanie for ruining the surprise. And Alex leans into her bumping his shoulder against hers as he says, "You've got friends, Jo. Mom friends. And isn't Ms. Schmidt coming for a few days in May after I've gone back to work and you're still on leave?"

"Yeah," Jo quietly confirms as she presses her right hand to the side of her stomach.

Her former teacher and biggest cheerleader had refused to take no for an answer when Jo called to tell her about the pregnancy four months ago, and the baby's sudden kick against her palm seems to confirm that Jo isn't the only one excited for Ms. Schmidt to finally make the trip out to Seattle. Jo immediately reaches out to grab Alex's left hand, to press it against the spot where the baby had kicked allowing him to dip his head and press his forehead against hers once more.

"I didn't realize this class was that important to you, but you have to know I didn't mess this up on purpose. I just – you've got me, okay? You've got me," Alex promises.

The smile that comes to Jo's face is a reflex because she's not sure there will ever be a day when hearing him say that won't make her happy. And her left hand snakes upward to cup his cheek as her head tilts upward and her lips press against his in a soft, gentle kiss.

Jo's lips twist into a smile against his when he tries to deepen the kiss and, by mere coincidence, the baby kicks strongly against their clasped hands as though in protest. And she laughs aloud when Alex mumbles something about the baby already knowing 'pause' as she pulls away from him.

"Thank you," Jo murmurs as she moves to stand up, as she extradites herself from his grasp massaging the small of her back as she squats down and checks on the condition of his hand. Alex eyes her movements warily recalling from medical school and too many shifts working with OB that back pain is usually a sign of early labor. And as though she can read his mind, Jo offers him a sharp look followed by a teasing smile.

"Relax, Alex, I'm not in labor. We had to practice our breathing exercises in Lamaze tonight on one of those bouncy, exercise balls and, apparently, I'm not that flexible."

"Oh, really? I think that begs to differ," he replies with a cocky grin and a gesture towards her belly with the hand not covered with an ice pack. "I seem to remember that happened because someone wanted to show off just how flexible she is."


End file.
